Just say no.

“Just say no” is best known as the slogan of the U.S. anti-drug campaign associated with First Lady Nancy Reagan in the early-to-mid 1980s. It was popularized through speeches, school visits, and the “Just Say No” clubs that spread nationally, and it became a shorthand directive aimed at youth to refuse drugs and peer pressure. Although often treated as a generic anonymous maxim today, its cultural prominence is tied to the Reagan-era “War on Drugs” and the broader public-service messaging environment of that period, including television PSAs and coordinated community programs.

The phrase compresses a moral and practical instruction into a simple, memorable refusal. Its power lies in its clarity: it frames resistance as an immediate, personal choice that requires no elaborate justification. At the same time, the slogan’s simplicity has been criticized for implying that complex social, psychological, and medical issues can be solved primarily through individual willpower. In broader usage beyond drug prevention, “just say no” functions as a general assertion of boundaries—an encouragement to decline demands, temptations, or pressures—while still carrying echoes of its 1980s public-policy origins.

“Just Say No.”
“Just say no to drugs.”
“Just say no to (something).”